saints only in the niche. She clambered down the hill wailing between the catches in her breath as she ran. She followed Gerard and Margaret until the sound of their horses' hoofs died away in the distance, but they did not hear. Darkness was closing in when she reached the herd. As she drove them home one of the cows fell over the precipice. Her husband was angry with her when she got home; he seized her by the hair and beat her cruelly. While Margaret was singing her Spanish song Gangi lay on a pallet on the floor weeping over her bruises and the loss that exposed her to these ills. A fifth part of her spiritual armor had fallen from her. So soon had the malice of the unseen that is always brooding round found the breach and flooded in upon her.

Early in the morning Gangi visited the Brahmin anchorite in the shrine. She found the chela squatting in the porch cleaning the brass vessels of the temple. A Saddhu sat beside him, his face hidden. The Guru was within. She could hear his sad monotonous chant rising and falling with a dismal cadence. It was the plaint of a man who has shut his eyes to the brightness of the world and lives within dark walls; it uttered no wish or hope. Peering into the temple, she could see him crooning over the altar, now erect, now prone, his forehead pressed to the ground in the prostration of the five members. Presently he lighted a wick and scattered petals on the lap of the god. Gangi saw his fingers waving in the air before the image. The light flickered out; darkness recaptured the place, and he went on mumbling his mantras.

Gangi had heard that he continued for weeks without food or water, and as his early needs became less his spiritual efficacy increased until he became one with his supernatural allies.

He could make himself invisible; he

could project himself to great distances; he could avert the evil eye; or, if the spirit moved him, blight crops, lay a murrain upon herds and flocks, and cause impious men to wither and pine away.

Gangi was awed and frightened. She explained to the acolyte her need. He told her to bring an offering of three goats and he would endeavor to obtain the hermit's intercession. But she must wait; the holy man might be engaged in these occult rites for hours. But as she spoke the figure stirred by the altar. The hermit had risen; he was stooping to put on his sandals in the outer sanctuary; he approached the threshold. Gangi saw that he was still in a state of trance. He gazed past her without seeing her; his eyes were motionless orbs fixed in their sockets: he confronted the day as if the sun's rays offended him.

"Now speak," said the acolyte.

Gangi became hysterical; she summoned passion to aid her fear; she unwound her matted locks and flung her hands in the air, revolving like a mænad as she shrieked out the tale of sacrilege.

"Lay a blight upon him," she screamed. "He comes to the hill with a woman daily. Cause him to waste away before her eyes. Wither their issue. May no male child suck at her breast. And oh, Avenger of the poor, Friend of the Rishis, Repositary of the Vedas, remove the offence, restore the image to the cairn."

At the sound of footsteps the accents died on her lips to rise again more shrilly.

"See, they come! May they be accursed. Deal with them according to their due."

Gerard and Margaret appeared around a bend in the path. They walked like lovers treading air. Margaret, who had seen so little of Indian village life, was enchanted with the

distant view of the quaint old mossgrown shrine beside the well under the neem and tamarind trees. But as she drew near the cries of Gangi disturbed the peace of the place. It was clear that they had lighted on some village tragedy. They saw a wild woman swaying to and fro in a paroxysm of rage and hurling prayers and imprecations across the threshold into the shrine. Inside a demented old man, who looked as if he had escaped from the tomb, gazed at her without speech. There were two other figures by the door, one leant against the jamb, his face half-hidden. The little that was seen of him suggested a sinister motive for concealment.

"Some one has ill-treated the poor thing," Margaret said. "Can you make her understand and find out what it is? She looks as if she had been robbed or cheated. It may be something in which we can help."

Gerard asked her what the matter was, but as they approached she recoiled; she shrank from the hem of Margaret's dress as if it had been defiled. Then she collapsed on the ground, mumbling incoherently, hausted by her hysteria.

ex

Margaret felt sure the mischief was in the shrine. She peered in. The figure by the door straightened itself, and Gerard saw it for the first time.

He could see that it was deformed somehow-how he could not exactly tell. The chest was gross and unmanly, there was no hair on the body, the nails were inches long, the mouth a mere gibbous fissure showing no teeth but a gray palate. The whites of the eyes seemed to have grown over the pupils, yet it peered through these films with a kind of arrogant smile, whether it was conscious or due to some displacement of the nerves one could not say, but it gave one the idea of a beast inspired by some devil's contract with the knowledge of something

in the light of which man and the shadows he pursued were the vainest phenomena on earth. There seemed to be pride in its disillusionment and in the physical and spiritual corruption it breathed.

As it rose Gerard called to Margaret to come back, but he was too late. The beast intercepted her; it almost touched her face with its long talons; she must have felt its breath. Mad with rage, Gerard lunged at it savagely with his stick, but he struck at air, and the temple doors clanged to ominously.

Margaret leant against the porch white as a ghost. She had never been so near fainting in her life.

"Gerard, dear," she said, as soon as she could speak, "you look as if you would like to, loot the place with a squadron of your Derejats."

"I should. But did that swine-dog touch you?"

"Not quite but it was horribly close." A bell rang inside the shrine, and a monotonous rhythmic chant rose from the altar, gathering in intensity.

"It sounds like a commination service," Gerard said. It was.

"May he waste away like camphor and have no one to lay him on the ground when he dies. May he and his house, and his race, and his name pass utterly away. May there be no remembrance of him. After passing through the torments of hell, may he be born a worm in offal thirty-three thousand years. May he”

"Let us go," he said. "It is no good trying to make our peace with the village now. I will put the bogie back to-morrow. I wish that fool, Ghazi Khan, had not given the sais the wrong parcel."

It was a dismal procession home. Margaret, in spite of her attempt to be cheerful, felt giddy and sick. For the first time in their walks she was tired. Gerard was savage with himself and all the world. Of all the parts he

was

more

could have to play, none sweet than the protector of Margaret; yet this hideous thing had happened to her before his very eyes, and he had not been able to help. Also he was conscious of having been in the wrong about the idol, and he had a suspicion that the scene at the shrine had something to do with it. The woman, Gangi, followed them for miles wailing and cursing, but she would answer no questions. To increase their depression a sudden storm broke on them from the plains, drenching them to the skin. It was a rough track at all times. Now Margaret's sodden skirt weighed her down, and the treacherous pine-needles, clotted by the rain, slipped from under her feet. When they reached the horses she was thoroughly tired.

While he was changing, Gerard tried to reason away his gloom. He and Margaret stood on the threshold of Elysium. Real life was only just beginning for them. Three days ago he had not imagined such happiness was possible. It was absurd to be depressed and to let little things disturb his peace of mind. Yet he was vaguely troubled. He had a presentiment that things were not going to run smoothly with them, and that it was his own fault. Margaret had been through a terrible day, but the thought of seeing her in a few minutes warm and dry and comfortable cheered him.

Gerard found Mrs. Chicester alone. Margaret was lying down; she was a little feverish and had a bad headache. Mrs. Chicester was inclined to be irritated with Hayden for his share in it, but when she saw the dismay in his face she could not help laughing.

"Margaret will be all right to-morrow, but not strong enough for another excursion. I am afraid you will have to take your idol back alone. He has done enough mischief."

Mrs. Chicester believed in totems and mascots.

"The China was Dresden," she said. "And Margaret had not had a day's illness till her bogie was installed. Besides, I had the most atrocious luck at bridge last night."

She had not heard of the incident at the shrine.

While they were having tea a telegram was brought Hayden telling him to meet his colonel at a quarter past twelve the next morning at Chandigarh junction. He was going through to Simla. This meant that Gerard would not be back in Gerkal till five, even if the train were punctual. Still there was a moon, and Gerard had made up his mind to return the bogie to its ghastly company by night if not by day. Evidently the mist-ridden peak was its proper sphere. Henceforth His Obesity should emit his rays of malevolence on his own unclean disci

ples.

That night he learnt more of them. He dined at the club, and sat next a policeman named Semphill. Gerard described the scene at the shrine to him, and the beastly monstrosity that had waved its clammy paws in Margaret's face as she peered in. Only he did not mention Margaret.

"My dear fellow," Semphill said, “it might have been much worse. That was an Aghori you saw; I think I know the man. They are the most offensive beasts unhanged. You may think yourself lucky you did not see him at his filthy tricks. You wouldn't have enjoyed your dinner if you had. But I'll tell you all about it when we've fed."

Gerard was enlightened in the smoking-room afterwards.

weaknesses, and so are nearer to God. Nothing revolts them; they are not subject to ordinary diseases. This sort of thing goes down enormously with the common people. I think I know the one you saw. He used to sit at the cross-roads near Pinjor with his head tilted back and his mouth open showing no teeth, just as you describe. What were his eyes like?"

"Like the white of an egg, a bit solid where the pupils ought to be. And they seemed to grin."

"That's the man. He didn't beg. and no one ever saw him eat. When people asked him what he lived on he said 'Babies.' It may, or may not, have been true-they are great boasters. All we knew was that he sometimes disappeared at night. Have a whisky and soda?"

"Thanks, I will."

"Of course, if we catch them at it we can run them in. If they dig any one up, it comes under desecration of tombs. I have known them prosecuted under the Public Nuisance Act. The Brahmins use them sometimes to annoy squeamish folk against whom they have a grudge. They squat in front of a house with their morsel until they are paid to go on. I heard a queer tale at Deesa of an Aghori who stopped a funeral. The relatives were indignant, but they dared not use violence. Then the rain came and nothing would induce the pyre to light. In the end they had to abandon it."

"Thanks. I think I've heard enough. Let's go out and get some fresh air."

But neither fresh air nor strong drink could disinfect Gerard's dreams. He went to bed and saw a pageant of Aghoris.

VI.

Hayden woke up with fever. The strongest man is not grilled and drenched alternately without conse quences. He dosed himself with quin

ine and rode down the hill with a buzzing head.

The Simla train was three hours late. When it arrived Gerard's colonel had no good news for him. It turned out that the agitators had been at work in Ambala, and they had managed to rake in a weed or two fn Strangway's Horse before one of the native officers came to hear of them. Among the disaffected was a Malik in Gerard's squadron, a shifty blackguard whom Gerard had always regarded with suspicion. "The damned fellow was bucking sedition in the lines," the Colonel said. Gerard was disgusted. The whole business galled him. He must go and work the fellows into hand again. Incidentally it might mean that he and Margaret would have to put off the Church and the milliner and their glacier camp.

It was four o'clock when he started for Gerkal. The fever had hold of him, and his head swam so that it was an effort to sit straight in the saddle. As he rode through the main street of Chandigarh he remembered that Margaret ought to have a pair of knee-caps for her pony, so he dismounted and took a short cut through narrow alleys towards the leather bazaar. Soon he found himself in a quiet backwater of the old city, among the houses of Brahmins and astrologers, of which one sees little more than blind walls with mystic symbols on them, and here and there a corbelled window obstinately barred, with a bare chink to look through, or an old gateway studded with brass nails within a porch decorated all over with carved figures of the Pantheon. There seemed to be no life within these mysterious secretive dwellings, but Gerard felt that there was a hidden side to them, and that the old régime nourished a vital flame within and kept a degenerate order from the door. He threaded the intricate maze, steering himself, as

he thought, by his bump of locality, though the woman Gangi would have said that the anchorite's curse was upon him, for it was a grim den into which he fell.

He was in a narrow passage between two dead walls when he became aware that someone in urgent need was crying out to him. His head was dizzy with a sudden wave of heat after a turn of ague, and he was almost deaf with the singing of quinine in his ears, but he was certain that he heard his own name called. It was the merest shadow of a voice that he followed, like the echo of a cicada or the shrill

pipe of Ariel. It led him to a great gateway opening into a court-yard. As he stumbled through the open wicket Ganesh leered at him from the lintel, and Hanuman in his most riotous mood seemed about to leap on him from the wall. He stood in the cloisters of the temple of Vishnu.

The door of the cell whence the voice issued stood ajar. Gerard pushed in, but he could see nothing in the dim light after the blinding glare outside. He tried to fling the door wide open to let in some sunshine, but it had closed behind him, and he heard the bolt slide into the catch. He kicked at it without effect, and began groping about the room for something to use

as

became accustomed to the faint light, and the other inmate of the cell took shape across the charpoy. It was the Aghori. Its white filmy eyes explored the darkness above Gerard's head. There was some maggot of desire behind them which it was Gerard's business to subdue, even if he had to crush it with rending of tissues, as the rats the cockroaches. So he sat confronting the beast, while a nerve in his head beat time to a frivolous refrain that would come and lodge there as if he were a musical box, in spite of his efforts to drive it out. Very slowly the Aghori rose and lifted the sheet from the charpoy and stooped over it. Gerard struck at it with his ridingwhip; it squirmed towards. him and captured his feet; he felt that it was biting through his riding-boots. The lashes fell on its naked back, and the sound of them was dear to his soul. The whimperings of the beast woke the savage in him. Then the rhythm of the whip got out of tune somehow with the nerve that throbbed in his brain, and he went to sleep.

How many hours he lay there unconscious he could not tell, but when he awoke the door was open and the full moon flooded the cell.

Gerard found his horse in the serai. He started for Gerkal at a mad gallop, but arrived there in a dhoolie. The cholera ward received him. He watched the cramped muscles playing under his skin. Then he went to sleep again and floated for untold æons through numberless compartments of space towards a white peak which never seemed to grow any nearer. He was afraid that the thing which held him away from it would snap. He dreaded this very much, because the Aghori sat on the summit waiting for His Obesity to die.

VII.

No weakness is so human as super